Story:The Scientist and the Sea/Chapter 1
About as expected, he thought ruefully. It’s truly a pity that they can’t see the worth Evie would have in allowing me to rescue apparently psychologically failed experiments. What I require is some kind of proof of concept… Still, he had to admit that his efforts with training Evie had not yielded much success as of yet. The young girl’s mind continued to spill over effortlessly into those around her. How could he teach one who had never known boundaries to build barriers around her mind? The last folder’s label had a familiar number on it. He traced the curve of the “5” with a finger, smiling slightly in remembrance. Number 153. Leslie. Inside was another communication note. He was on his feet as soon as he finished reading it, leaving his chair spinning as he rushed out of his office. “Button up your labcoat!” yelled Miriam from her desk as he strode past. There was no expression on David’s face as he walked briskly through the corridors of the Lab. It wasn’t that he felt anxious, precisely; he could count the measured, slow beat of his heart, slower than his footsteps. It was more that he felt that something had been set in motion, the inevitable tumble of marbles down a slope. Faintly, he could hear a roar like the distant sound of the sea. ---- There was only a single Silver Sentry waiting in the corridor that led to Leslie’s complex. The guard dutifully scanned David’s ID, but hesitated before opening the door for him. “Doctor, with all due respect, are you sure about going in there? We had to evacuate all the Sentries on the inside.” David gave him a smile with a slight edge to it. “I’m certain I’ll be fine.” The door slid open with a vacuum-sealed hiss and the guard waved him into the unlit corridor, doubtless thinking that reckless scientists could not be helped. David took a few strides into the darkness of the tunnel and stepped into- Water, pressing in on him from every direction, with fathomless depths above and below. He had lost the surface entirely. He twisted his head to find the light, but the murky waters bent it into strange refractory patterns – beams of lighter green that penetrated the darker viridian at random. Tendrils of cold snaked over his limbs, pulling him down with clammy fingers that sapped his strength, made every movement sluggish. He felt the inevitable, burning pressure in his lungs, impossible to ignore. Air. He needed air. It was so cold. He watched absurdly as a stream of precious bubbles escaped from his mouth and filtered through his hair. Down here, every sound was muted and somehow louder at the same time. He heard the gurgle of the sea as if it were invading his ears, taking residence in his own skull. Salt stung his eyes; maybe the ocean was entering him through there. He needed air. If he breathed in, he would die. If he breathed out, he would die. The thought seemed hysterical to him. His laughter escaped in a rush of bubbles. Somehow, it lessened the tension in his chest for a moment; he thought perhaps that he had learnt about it an aeon ago, in a drowsy science lab as a student. Mechanical drive, hypercapnic drive, hypoxic drive. Hypoxia. Out of oxygen. Oxygen, air, bubbles. The bubbles had to be rising to the surface, he realised. He watched them drift steadily away from him. Too late. He had no strength to pull himself in that direction. Another current buffeted him, sending his body drifting further into the endless abyss. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the searing pain in his lungs. It was spasming fitfully, trying to crawl out of his chest, out of this pathetic vessel that couldn’t even fight to survive. The water was closer to black now. You are going to die. It was his voice that said that in his head, quietly, calmly, certainly. The words stilled him. It was so simple, after all. He was drowning. You are going to die. He opened his mouth and took a breath. In rushed the sea. The burning in his lungs was replaced by icicle stabs. He could visualise his alveoli swelling and bursting, spattering the inside of his chest with droplets of blood that were washed away immediately by salt water. He exhaled and breathed in again. It hurt no less this time, but what did it matter? He was already dying. The few remaining bubbles of air that had belonged to him drifted upwards. There. That patch of light was slightly brighter than all the others. Limbs were less agony to move than lungs full of water. Slowly, he moved towards the ghost of lighter green, watching it brighten into white. The patch of light coalesced into the figure of a pale young woman, dressed in a white slip. His clothes were dry. David stepped into Leslie’s room. “Hello, Leslie.” His voice and breathing were steady. Only his heart beat a little faster than usual, and it was already slowing down to its usual rate. He managed to give her a smile. “That was somewhat unexpected. You know it doesn’t work against me.” Leslie returned the smile wanly. “It’s been a while. I wanted to see if you had changed.” “What do you think?” he asked. “Same David,” she said. “Same David,” he agreed. But not the same Leslie. The clinical voice in David’s mind catalogued all of the differences he could see, coldly and efficiently. Leslie’s figure, once so petite that it had approached boyishness, was now the skeletal silhouette of a consumptive. Her hair was the same bone white stream that fell straight down her back, but now it was thin and as brittle as its colour. The oval contours of her face had been chiselled into gauntness. Even those startling eyes – irises so pale that they faded into the sclera, the sharp slant of their shape – were sunk deep into her face. He pulled a chair forwards and motioned her to sit in her own. The slight look of relief on her face as she collapsed into it did not escape him. He counted her breathing automatically – nineteen, twenty, twenty-one breaths in a minute, in the span of ten breaths of his own. None of these thoughts touched his expression as he lounged casually in the chair in front of her. Leslie’s cell was a transparent glass box, sitting within the larger room. It held the chair she sat on, a small desk with a few notebooks and pencils, and her bed. The box was brightly lit by hidden spotlights at all times; with the amount of white furnishings inside it, the entire thing seemed to glow. When the external room was filled with its usual contingent of guards and scientists, Leslie would feel like an animal at the zoo, surrounded by sleepless eyes. “One of the guards let it slip,” she said without preamble. “They kind of forget that I can hear, sometimes.” David nodded. In his mind, he could see the neat red capitals that had been stamped on the communication note. Terminated. “Do you know when…?” she trailed off. “Never,” he replied cheerfully. “I pulled several favours before I came to visit you. Termination is off, and you’re going to receive the same chemotherapy as you were before. It only cost me my soul in the form of four reports, two consults, and a promise to be cordial to that arsehole in charge of Experiment #006.” Leslie stared at him in silence. Finally, she said, “You’re lying. This is to make sure I stop fighting…so I won’t expect it when it comes.” “Would I lie to you?” “Yes,” she said immediately. “You lie a lot.” “True. But not to you.” Perhaps a little. More bending the truth. “Not about this.” As she tilted her head, birdlike, he was reminded strongly of how she had looked when they first met. Those eyes, so direct for a thirteen year old girl. Such a curiosity for the young David, just starting out at the Labs. At this barren eighteen, she could hardly weigh more than she did then. His voice again. You are going to die. “What’s it like, dying?” she asked suddenly. David filed away a mental note about her unconscious echo. Leslie had often managed to do that. Perhaps it was a subtle extrasensory ability that no one had detected yet. Perhaps it was merely part of why they had developed their rapport so easily in the first place. It had been his very first case at the Labs, which had won him his reputation. He shrugged. “Not very pleasant, from my limited experience.” “What do you see when I use my abilities?” That was the curious thing about Leslie’s powers. She never knew what it was that she inflicted on each individual: neither the general sense of overwhelming doom, nor the specifics of their dying. David fiddled absent-mindedly with a button on his labcoat as he considered his reply. Still undone. No wonder the guard had stared at me. “I’m drowning. The worst thing about drowning is how powerless you feel. Suddenly you realise how alien an environment the water is, and what a fool you were for believing you might belong in it.” Leslie mouthed the word slowly, as if savouring it. “Drowning. I’d like to try it.” “Having partaken of the experience a few times, I can tell you that you’d probably prefer not. Not the most fantastic end to a day.” He stood up from the chair. “As much as I applaud scientific enquiry, try not to drown yourself in your bathtub once I leave. The chemotherapy treatment is coming out of my paycheque, so I’d rather you not waste it.” “You’re going?” she asked. She stood up as well, resting her palm against the glass between them. “Work to do,” he said breezily. “I’ll come visit you again soon.” “You said that the last time you visited. More than a year ago.” That birdlike tilt again. “I don’t think I have a year this time.” A statement. He weighed his response quickly. To offer truth, or a lie? Astute as she was, he was certain that he could frame words neatly enough to give her the reassurance of hope. It hardly mattered, with the span of life that she had left. And yet… “I promise I’ll visit you as soon as I can,” he said. Relief broke over her face like the sun shining suddenly through clouds. Right words. He waved a languid good-bye and then walked out of the room, through the tunnel (which was, as he had recalled, a mere ten metres long when one wasn’t drowning), and out into the main corridor. The Silver Sentry from before was still standing there. He gave David a neat salute as the doctor exited. “She spared you, Doctor?” “Nah,” said David. “It’s not nearly as scary as the real thing.” He walked off before the Sentry could think of a way to reply. |}